Word: clouding
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...European Space Agency (ESA). The close encounters were set for March because that is when the comet passes through earth's orbital plane, the same level in which the spacecraft travel. Over several whirligig days, the flotilla will scrutinize the comet in exhaustive detail, from the fuzzy gaseous cloud that surrounds its icy nucleus to the two tails that by then will be streaming for millions of miles behind...
Like dancers in an intricately choreographed ballet, each craft will perform a variety of tasks, complementing and aiding one another every thrust of the way. Japan's two probes, Sakigake (Pioneer) and Suisei (Comet), between them will study the solar wind and examine the hydrogen cloud surrounding the comet. The Soviet Union's Vega 1 and Vega 2 will analyze the abundant dust motes and charged gases that envelop the comet's nucleus. Most remarkable of all, data and pictures from the Vega twins will enable European scientists to chart Halley's course precisely enough to allow their probe, Giotto...
...simply hurtling hunks of ice, where do they come from, and how do they get here? The same year that Whipple spun his theory of cosmic snowballs, Dutch Astronomer Jan Oort conceived of a kind of enormous warehouse for comets, which would come to be known as the Oort Cloud. Basing his calculations on the shape of cometary orbits and the number of new comets observed each year, Oort postulated that the cloud surrounds the solar system in a vast region 30,000 to 100,000 astronomical units from the sun (one AU is about 93 million miles, the distance...
...Oort Cloud, explains Berkeley's Spinrad, would consist of at least a trillion "dull blocks of ice," ranging from a few inches to a few miles in diameter. Out in that velvet blackness of space, where temperatures approach absolute zero, the snowballs remain unchanged, well beyond the effects of solar radiation, meteorite impacts, volcanic activity, atmosphere and other phenomena that have gradually changed the inner members of the solar system. Every once in a while, however, a passing star gives the cloud a gravitational jiggle, releasing hundreds of these fragments. Most of them are sent outward into interstellar space...
...Marcos and Aquino prepared last week for the formal launching of their campaigns, a cloud hung over the entire enterprise. Marcos opponents have filed ten petitions before the Supreme Court seeking to cancel the election because the President has refused to resign before it is held, as required under the constitution. The petitioners hope to delay the vote and thereby win the opposition more campaign time. But the ploy could backfire. If it begins to appear that either opposition candidate might outpoll the President, the Supreme Court, which is dominated by Marcos appointees, might declare the election null and void...